Tag: baseball

Suck it, MLweeB

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not too thrilled with the fact that the Dodgers completed their season of destiny and won the World Series, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for Freddie Freeman, who was obviously named the World Series MVP after batting .300 with an OPS of 1.364, four home runs, 12 RBI and the legendary walk-off grand slam in game 1 that basically set the entire tone of the series afterward.

Even though he plays for the Dodgers, the team he left Atlanta for, there’s not a bone in my body that holds any resentment or ill-will for the man, as he’s a first-class outstanding human being, embodies everything that’s good about baseball, and is someone whom requires a genuine effort to not like.  I am stoked that he has now won his second championship, played his butt off to win the WS MVP he easily deserved, and is getting the mainstream accolades and recognition that he deserves.

I just don’t care for the fact that the Dodgers organization are the world champions, because they kind of validated the importance of spending money, as they committed over a billion dollars ($1.185B to be exact)  to just four players, on top of their existing $230M payroll, and being a Braves fan, it’s aggravating to see teams that spend money that succeed, knowing the team I follow will never, ever spend in the same manner, and instead feed us all sorts of bullshit rhetoric and make excuses on why they won’t, despite all the evidence that exists that shows the economic benefit of a championship team.

Plus, the swarms of insufferable bandwagon Dodger fans scuttling out of the cracks and gutters like the cockroaches they are getting to be happy is annoying to me, and makes me make the face of the Friends watching meme whenever I see or hear all the front-running celebratory garbage that comes from them in the news or on social media.  It’s bad when I would rather put up with the devil I know in Yankees fans getting to be happy over Dodgers fans, even in spite of the shenanigans of the two outfield goombas who grabbed and tried pry the ball out of Mookie Betts’ glove among other typical bad Yankee fan behavior.

But most of all, the Dodgers winning the World Series is precisely what MLB wanted to be the outcome, because they’ve gone full weeb-mode this season, what with pushing Ohtanimania down everyone’s throats, and seemingly every popular team there is making a mad dash to acquire Japanese talent, none more than the Dodgers with not just Ohtani, but also Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and they’re all treated like these mystical Mr. Miyagis demonstrating karate for the first time in history based on how every little thing they do is made such a big deal about.

Make no mistake, the season Shohei Ohtani had was other-worldly, but for every game where he had a homer and two steals, Yamamoto goes five innings with three earned runs, and it’s applauded like he just pitched a Maddux.  Shota Imanaga has a low ERA in the first half of the season and people act like he knew how to throw a disappearing pitch, meanwhile the Braves’ Reynaldo Lopez led the league in ERA up until like August, but nobody cared about him because he wasn’t Japanese.

I think my favorite part of the World Series was that in spite of the monumental rocket ship the Ohtani hype train had strapped to it, fans and viewers were treated to a series of futility as he went a pitiful 2 for 19 (.105) in the series, an OPS of .385 and no home runs.  Aaron Judge was absolutely dragged by the media and fans for being ineffective, in comparison to Ohtani, he went 4 for 18 (.222) with an OPS of .836 and one home run.  It’s just that the Yankees as a team stunk it up throughout the series and used Judge as a scapegoat, while Ohtani could easily hide underneath Freddie Freeman’s Superman cape while the team kept on winning.

Which brings us back to Freddie Freeman, whom is the only thing I like about the Dodgers winning the World Series, because a I genuinely like, enjoy and admire, gets to be the focal point and superstar, everyone in Atlanta already knew of, everyone in Los Angeles is probably well aware of now, and probably every baseball fan in the world is aware of now too.

When the lights were the brightest, the stakes were the highest, Ohtani absolutely crumpled under the pressure.  Yamamoto, to his credit did pitch a great game in his one start, but when all was said and done, the World Series was the Freddie Freeman show, and even if it means that the Dodgers are World champions, I am okay with it.

This is Freddie Freeman’s world, and everyone; Ohtani, Yamamoto, the country of Japan, the rest of MLB, are just living in it.

Every baseball kid’s dream ending, starring Freddie Freeman

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Bottom of the ninth tenth, down a run, bases loaded, two outs; in the World Series.

The only thing more that there could’ve been was a full-count, but Freddie Freeman had to go ahead and remove that extra drama by instead blasting the first pitch he saw deep into the outfield stands of Dodger Stadium, and just like that, the Dodgers and their $241M payroll burst from the jaws of defeat against the Yankees and their $309M payroll to take the critical first game of the 2024 World Series.

If this game had ended in a similar fashion at the bat of anyone other than Freddie Freeman, this post doesn’t exist.  Especially Shohei Ohtani, and especially Max Muncy whom I think is the living embodiment of the meme of the guy that is part of the group project that gets an A but doesn’t actually do anything but gets to talk about the A like he did.  If Ohtani delivered the game-winning hit, I don’t post.  If it were Muncy, I don’t post.  Even if it were half-Korean Tommy Edman, I still have a literal list of topics that I’d rather spend my time writing about.

But Freddie Freeman is a guy whom it is impossible for a person like me to feel even the slightest amount of malice or disdain for, even if his actions result in outcomes that I did not want, like the Dodgers getting any sort of wins over the Yankees in the World Series.  Dare I say, when he clobbered that first pitch and in that split second where he and only he knew it was gone, and he begun holding his bat up triumphantly like an Olympic torch, only for nanoseconds later the rest of the his teammates and all the fans in Dodger Stadium realized it was headed out and began their approving roaring, I felt happy for him and only him alone, because that’s what Freddie Freeman means to me.

I mean, this is the dream outcome of the dream scenario that every baseball kid dreams about in their backyard, at some points in their lives, and Freddie Freeman just fulfilled it better than anyone could have possibly done.  In a sport that tracks absolutely every single play, instance and scenario, this was literally the only time in the history of the game, where a World Series game had ended in a walk-off grand slam.

Sure, I’m sure there will be lots of challenges and rebuttals that the only thing that tops this is a walk-off grand slam to outright win the World Series or comparing it to Joe Carter’s Series-ending walk-off three-run blast in 1993, but if we could just kick the nerds out of the room for just a second, and simply marvel at the magical moment we just witnessed.

Back to reality though, nothing changes with the fact that I still want the Yankees to win it, for the sake of my wife and her family, and the put a damper on Ohtanimania, and this heartbreaking L belongs to nobody but Yankee skipper Aaron Boone.  Why he trotted out a cold and rusty Nestor Cortes to face three-straight MVPs in extra innings is a decision that I already question, and imagine armchair baseball strategists and Yankee fans all around also question.

Aside from the fact that Cortes was colder than a pint of Häagen-Dazs buried at the bottom of a chest freezer in the garage, having not pitched since September, he’s a junk ball starting pitcher that relies on deception and trickery over having sheer, stuff, to get batters out, much less three straight MVPs in Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman. 

Personally, I have this belief that starting pitchers are not ideal candidates to come out in relief, especially in extra innings, because pitchers are often neurotic creatures optimally comfortable in defined roles, and a guy like Cortes has been a starter for most of his Yankee career, and starting pitchers are mentally okay with an occasional hit and an occasional run, because as starters, they have the cushion of knowing they’ve got several innings behind and beyond them for the team to battle on their behalf.  All that cushion vanishes in late and extra innings, and more often than not, starting pitchers don’t fare well in those scenarios.

In all fairness, Cortes did manage to get demi-god Ohtani out, thanks to the gutsy selfless crashing into the stands catch by Alex Verdugo, but when I heard that Mookie was getting the intentional walk so that they could go lefty-vs-lefty with Freeman, my face literally made the wince emoji .

Now Aaron Boone has been applauded before in understanding modern baseball strategy, but going Cortes vs. Freeman will be one that I’m sure many will be questioning for a long time, especially if the Dodgers outright win the World Series.  Freddie Freeman is a career .273 hitter against lefties with an .804 OPS which is nerd speak for he hits left-handed pitching very well.  Conversely, Mookie Betts has never recorded a hit off of Nestor Cortes; granted, both sample sizes are extremely small, limited to a single game earlier in the season, but when it comes down to it, I would rather have taken my chances on Betts than Freeman, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s a shame too, because a lot of standout Yankee performances are wiped out in this loss; Gerrit Cole’s six innings because apparently 5-6 innings is applause worthy in today’s baseball, the aforementioned Alex Verdugo catch into the stands, Giancarlo Stanton continuing his torrid postseason run with another home run, and for me, Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s bonkers baserunning in the tenth that gave the Yankees their one-run lead going into the final frame is a shame to have wiped by Boone’s questionable management.

Make no mistake though; in order for this moment to be preserved in immortality, the Dodgers must win outright.  Much like Chisholm Jr.’s baserunning will be forgotten in the loss, Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam will be reduced to a statistical anomaly if the Dodgers don’t win the whole thing.  And as much as I have genuine love in my heart for the man, I’m still pulling for the Yankees, and hope that this one magic moment is the extent of Freeman’s contributions to the Dodgers’ cause.

FOX’s Shohei Ohtani coverage is out of control

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Let’s get one thing out of the way – I have no dislike for Shohei Ohtani.  Even if he is Japanese and the world has basically fetishized him into oblivion, I don’t have any beef with the guy.  He legitimately is basically the greatest player to have played the game of baseball at this point and seems like a pretty humble and level-headed human being.

But the way FOX and the rest of the media world has continuously forced him down the throats of every baseball fan, sports fan or just television watcher, is definitely making me sour on the concept of Shohei Ohtani, and it goes without saying, is among the chief reasons why not one iota of my being won’t be rooting for the Dodgers to take the L in the World Series.

Nobody likes being told what to do.  I don’t like being told what to do.  I definitely don’t like being told what I need to like, and the way FOX has gone so ridiculously out of the way to put Ohtani on this pedestal has been ridiculous and embarrassing frankly, and not even being teammates with Freddie Freeman, whom I will always be a fan of, and would ordinarily be okay with him winning another World Series with someone else as long as it weren’t with the Dodgers.

The “X Time Away from Shohei Ohtani” was mortifying to discover that FOX was doing, and I’m glad to have been watching more AL playoffs as opposed to the NL, because it seemed inevitable that the Dodgers were going to win the pennant after vanquishing of the Padres, and although I didn’t witness any of these obnoxious bumpers myself, I saw plenty of screen caps and memes enough to know just how much I hated them.

This is the kind of thing that would make me hope for failure and ineffective at-bats, but because he really is that incredible of a baseball player, of course he delivered in many of these long-called for at-bats, which added to the e-bile I felt in my thoughts about the Shohei Ohtani coverage.

Like, whether it’s on television, or on various social media platforms, or ESPN or any other sports sites, one of my go-to snarky remarks is that I can hear the Oriental gong going off whenever Shohei Ohtani is being discussed, because that’s just how much he has caught the imagination of the collective world with his baseball talents.  It’s almost obnoxious to know that he’s actually a pretty decent dude, notwithstanding the potential gambling problem/scandal from the start of the season which was kind of refreshing to think that amid all of his Mr. Perfect-isms, he was flawed too like the rest of us.

Either way, I thought that I would have more to say about the subject than this, but I basically got my point across.  Enough with the Shohei Ohtani coverage, and at this point, him winning the World Series with the also-insufferable Dodgers is the absolute worst-case scenario there is as far as baseball is concerned.  It validates flagrant spending, egregious marketing of Japanese superstars, and makes a whole lot of obnoxious front-running Dodgers fans happy, which I can’t abide for.  I’d rather side with the devils I know, and actively root for the Yankees, if for nothing at all, would make mythical wife and my mother-in-law really pleased to see the Commissioner’s Trophy being hoisted in the Bronx.

But my parting thought, as insufferably obnoxious the Shohei Ohtani coverage and the Japan fetish has been these playoffs and this season, shoutout to Tommy Edman for being the NLCS MVP; that’s right, a half-KOREAN guy being the best player on the Dodgers for going 11-for-27 with an OPS of 1.023 and a home run.

Suck it, weebs

On the precipice of history: the 2024 Chicago White Sox

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ordinarily, I would think I would be committing the ultimate jinx by writing this, and tempting the tides of fate into absolutely feeling the utmost need to punish me for my attempt at clairvoyance.  But I am doing so because I’m about to skip town for the next week, and when the historic inevitably occurs, I won’t really be in a position to be able to take the time to write about it, and I feel that this is one of those things best brogged about as close to its drop date, rather than being something having to be written in retrospect, like the unfortunate majority of the posts I write these days.

And let’s be real here, in order for the White Sox to avoid becoming the worst team in MLB history, they have to go 7-1 in their remaining games, and at the precise time I’m writing this, they’re down 4-1 to the Padres to which if the score holds, puts them at loss #119, tying the American League record for worst team in AL history, and one loss away from tying the 1962 Mets for the worst team in baseball history, before they’ll have several shots to futilely avoid becoming the de facto worst team in baseball history.

Yeah, it would take a legitimate act of god at this point for the White Sox to avoid making history at this point.  And if it were to actually happen, then I’d have received all the validation in the world that I needed to know that I am a supreme being that has actual influence on fates of the world.

But yes, this is a post to talk about and preemptively congratulate the 2024 Chicago White Sox, for becoming the worst team in Major League Baseball history.  Full stop, ever.  Not in this generation, this century, or some other made-up record,* we’re talking about: baseball is invented.  Period.  Worst team in history is the 2024 Chicago White Sox.  Period.

*oh and there’s a lot of this bullshit going around lately, like Elly de la Cruz becoming the youngest player to join the “25HR/65SB Club,” Bobby Witt Jr. being the newest member of the “30HR/30SB/10Triple Club” and any time Shohei Ohtani does anything, he’s the “only” member of the 51HR/51SB Club and you can hear the ancient Oriental gong ring when anyone talks about him

Seeing as how the Braves are slowly dying a truly slow and miserable bleed-out, and have fallen into a position of outside-looking-in as far as Wild Card positioning goes, the White Sox have actually been the thing that I’ve actually been tracking and paying attention to as an alternative.  And I have to say that it’s been really refreshing, from the standpoint of hoping for an outcome, and getting it with tremendous regularity; whereas the Braves inept offense keeps making them lose, much to my disappointment, I could always count on checking the scores and seeing the White Sox take L after L after L each night, as they keep on chugging to immortality.

It’s almost like being a kid again in 1996, watching the NBA box scores every morning and seeing the Chicago Bulls notch another W, en route to their historic 72-win season, and it seems fitting that it’s another Chicago sports franchise, also owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, that’s trouping their way towards a historic season, even if it’s not the side of history that a franchise would really want to be on. 

It’s still cool and incredible from a fan of history perspective, and even better that I have no real stake in it, other than the fact that White Sox fans really tore into me after I tore into their shitty ballpark in my sports brogging days, so I’ve always had a negative lean in my perception of the Chicago White Sox.

Bahaha, a little bit of live brogging here, I checked the Padres/Sox score just now to make sure that the Sox were still on their way to #119, and I was frightened to see that the Sox had gotten on the board and it was not only 4-2 Padres, but the White Sox had the bases loaded with just one out; a scenario where scoring a run(s) is a positive probability, and nothing short of two strikeouts or a double play is going to prevent that from happening . . . and then Dominic Fletcher promptly grounds into a double play and the Padres are now three outs away from the W, and the Sox are three outs away from tying the worst record in AL history.

But yeah, it’s still incredible to actually be able to witness like real history happening in sport, even if it’s as ironic as crowning a new worst team in history.  It’s not some fake record that the dorks at Elias come up with on a daily basis like most hits on a Thursday evening game with a humidity under 40% with Laz Diaz as home plate umpire after he ate Burger King for lunch, but a solid, concrete historical mark that actually was on a pedestal of being a record that might not be perceived to be possible to break.

I mean, it really is difficult to be this bad; there’s an adage in baseball that every team will win 60 games and lose 60 games every season, and it’s the other 42 games in which a team either becomes a championship caliber squad, or a team tanking on purpose to get optimal draft positioning.  The 2024 White Sox not only won’t get to 60 wins, it’s a very solid possibility that they might not even reach 40.

There was this one statistic I saw a little while ago about how the AL Central has four out of the five teams solidly above .500, but solely on account of the White Sox anchoring them down, the division as a whole is still under .500.  And the hits just keep on coming and coming as far as all the statistical anomalies that have bubbled up about just how bad the White Sox are, and as the kids say these day, I am here for them, all of them.

Like I said, ordinarily I wouldn’t dare tempt fate and write something like this before it happens, but math is a game of probabilities, and a .234 team miraculously going 7-1 down the stretch to avoid becoming the worst team in history isn’t a bet that I would take, and contrarily, in spite of my general phobia against sports betting, I would actually feel comfortable betting my house that the White Sox are going to fulfill their destiny in becoming the worst team in baseball history. 

It’s just a matter of when it’s going to happen, because they still have one more game against the playoff-hopeful Padres, three against the awful Angels who are still 29 wins better than the Sox while simultaneously being 31 games under .500, and then they close out their season with the Detroit Tigers who are very much in the thick of the Wild Card field and will more than likely still be fighting for their playoff lives next week.

But the odds are that it’s going to happen while I’m out of town and away from the keys, so as out of character it would be for me to commemorate before it happens, I just wanted to give a hearty congratulatory shoutout to the 2024 Chicago White Sox, for becoming the worst team in Major League Baseball history.  Y’all deserve it.

EDIT: Unsurprisingly, the Sox would make me sweat, winning 2/3 from the Angels and relying on the still then-unclinched Tigers to actually exert effort to get #121, before dropping the final two games to the Sox, allowing them to finish out the season with “just” 121 losses, one more than the 1962 Mets.  But like the wise Dom Toretto once paraphrased, it doesn’t matter if you lose by an inch or a mile, losing’s losing.

Columbus Clingstones: what, you were expecting something better from a Braves affiliate?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MiLB: Atlanta Braves’ AA-affiliates formerly known as the Mississippi Braves, formally change their name to the Columbus Clingstones, with their move to Columbus, Georgia

Originally, I was excited at the notion that along with the move out of racist-ass bumfuck Pearl, Mississippi, the Double-A Braves would be getting a brand-new team name and identity, steering them away from the homogenized and stuffy Also-Braves of Mississippi.  The AA Braves could have the opportunity to be an actual, fun, minor league team instead of being a minor league squad beholden to the stuffy and constricting brand standards of the Atlanta Braves Corporation, as they had been over the last, well since the existence of Braves Minor League Baseball.

But at the same time, I knew that I had to temper my expectations, because baseball in general doesn’t like to rock the boat too much, and for every Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, Rocket City Trash Pandas, Hub City Spartanburgers or any chintzy and creative minor league squad that appears out of nowhere, there are four other boring teams out there, like the Salem Red Sox, St. Lucie Mets, Fredericksburg Nats, and other squads that put the bare minimum of effort into their existences, and hope that by solely being present and loosely affiliated with their parent clubs, they will draw attendance.  And if I had to wager what side of the spectrum that an Atlanta Braves affiliate was going to lean towards, it definitely wasn’t going to be on the side where “fun” was, because fun doesn’t always necessarily equate to cashmoney.

So I was about as surprised as learning that global warming isn’t fake news when the news finally broke, of what the new Columbus Baseball Club was going to call themselves, and it was the Columbus Clingstones.

As I imagine most people’s reactions probably were, mine was first and foremost, what the fuck is a clingstone?

According to Google AIoverlord:

A clingstone is a type of stone fruit with flesh that sticks firmly to the pit, making it more difficult to remove than other fruits. Clingstone peaches are a common example of this type of fruit. 

And my first reaction was, oh, so there’s a difference between the peaches I like, where the pit falls right off, and the peaches that I always regret buying, where the flesh sticks to the pit and I always feel like I’m wasting delectable peach flesh when I have to cut around it to enjoy my fucking fruit, and it turns out that I’m not a fan of actual clingstones, and I’m most definitely not a fan of the name, Columbus Clingstones.

So, it figures that the Braves dropped the ball when it came to having a minor league affiliate with a name that is of below-average excitement.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the Emperors of Rome, and I like the clusterfuck that ended up with the Gwinnett Stripers, but the team had an opportunity to rise into the upper echelon of memorable and noteworthy minor league squads, but to no surprise, much like the organization’s entire modus operandi, stick to something vanilla, safe, boring and mostly forgettable in the vast pool of minor league baseball teams.

I will say though, as not mad just disappointed I am in the lame as name of Clingstones, I do have to give credit to the merch team, for running with the lameduck ball they were handed.  Although I’m not a fan of actual clingstone peaches, I still love peaches the fruit, and they are easily in my top-3 favorite fruits.  And I have a soft spot for mascots that are basically just inanimate objects given eyes and limbs, so that being said, I do appreciate the branding that the Clingstones have done, even if I think the name is booty.

That being said, I do want a shirt of the peach mascot, and I would consider getting a 59fifty cap if there’s a variant where it’s just the peach mascot, but I wouldn’t want anything that actually said Clingstones on it, because that’s how much I loathe the name.

So overall, the name is trash, but the execution of the branding has been done pretty well.  Unfortunately, the name is still set in stone at this point, and there’s no part of me that doesn’t connote the prefix “cling” as a negative, from clingy people to turds that cling to the tips of your dog’s fur after they take a crap that they end up wiping on your floor, so the general consensus to the whole unveiling of the Braves’ AA affiliate is a net-negative.  But then again, expecting anything dynamic and exciting out of the Atlanta Braves organization, even if they’re not officially owned by them anymore, is still like expecting to win a lottery, and this all frankly comes as no surprise.

Every Braves fan can hear the gears grinding

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Dodgers release Jason Heyward, he is free to sign anywhere that will take him

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the Braves this year has probably noticed that the team is operating on its usual Barves-ey cheapskate bullshit, picking up inexpensive castaways, cuts and releases from all the other teams in the league and trying to pawn them off like they’re the answers to the team’s woes and shortcomings.

However, the Braves have been pretty flagrant this year by picking up, almost exclusively, former players, with the hopes that the fans are as dumb as they hope they are (but surprisingly, aren’t) and put happy memories and false optimism on the obvious facts that these guys were all available because they’re not playing as well as they once did in a previous time, like 2021.  Eddie Rosario, Jorge Soler and Luke Jackson are some of the guys re-acquired by the team, with Rosario not only having been cut by the Braves, but he’s also, at the time of me writing this, just freshly cut from the Mets, after already being cut by the Nationals earlier in the year.

Soler hasn’t been terrible, but he also hasn’t been the World Series monster MVP he was in 2021, and Luke Jackson has been what he’s always been – a mediocre reliever, that no longer has Will Smith and a healthy Tyler Matzek and a pre-sucking AJ Minter to hide behind in the bullpen and is getting exposed as of late.  In other words, the Braves picked up mediocre product before the deadline and shouldn’t be surprised by getting mediocre return in investment.

But with the news of Jason Heyward’s release by the Dodgers, I feel like there’s no way in hell that I’m the only Braves fan whose blood went cold upon hearing it, because I think we all collectively knew the second we saw it, what some extreme cheapskate bean counters at The Battery were thinking when they saw it – pick ‘em up!

Believe me, Jason Heyward’s regular season debut on the Opening Day of 2010 is still one of the most magical sports memory I’ll ever have.  The super-typed 20-year old rookie phenom blasting a three-run home run in his very first at-bat against the Chicago Cubs is still stuff of legend, and having a monster rookie season, en route to being one of the core players of the organization for the next few years, all fantastic memories.

Heyward himself was always a stand-up player, a great role model for kids, and a guy that any organization would be happy to have.  I have no ill-will towards the man whatsoever, and I like him personally, but when it comes to his place currently as an active baseball player, I would rather the Braves not Barves, and pick him up, and try to convince fans that they can fix him back to being an All-Star, and insist on trotting him out on the regular, when the team is still somehow, miraculously in the thick of things when it comes to playoff position.

There’s a reason why the Dodgers released him, in favor of Chris Taylor of all people, and any contender like the Braves should probably think twice before considering picking him up, unless they want absolutely nothing but a 9th inning defensive replacement for a corner outfielder.

But I have this sinking feeling that the Braves aren’t going to listen to any logical arguments against Jason Heyward’s return to the team, and are going to be looking at dollar signs, exposure, newspaper articles and editorials about the prodigal son’s return home to Atlanta, and pick him up anyway soon.  The loss of Ronald Acuña, and the tumultuous health of Michael Harris II, outfield depth is stretched thin as it is, but Heyward’s .208 batting average this year really isn’t going to help out.

And these are the things that separate the Braves from being among the league’s elite, in spite of their general, miraculous on-field winning record.  I guess I should be fortunate that the organization continues to field a playoff-caliber team, but at the same time, I kind of wish they’d blow it all up, in order to build a World Series championship-caliber team, but I digress.

As much as I like and admire Jason Heyward the person, as a baseball player, his best years are long beyond him, and the further he stays away from the Braves, the better off the team will ultimately be.

I see you, Balakey

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t say that I’m particularly a fan of pitcher Blake Snell; I tend to not care for baseball players that act like out-of-touch man-babies when it comes to how much they’re paid for the privilege of playing professional baseball, and Snell is amongst the worst. 

He once suggested that players should’ve been paid their full salaries during the COVID season, and he’s one of those guys that it’s pretty clear that his full career objective is accumulating as much money as possible, which inherently there’s nothing wrong with, but it’s also the way that he’s trying to accomplish it with an inequitable amount of effort exerted to earn it that rubs me the wrong way.

This past off-season was a delight to see him flounder away during free agency, and basically becoming the cautionary poster boy for talented free agent to get absolutely pwned by the process.  He was looking for comparable money that the Dodgers had paid Japanese import Yoshinobu Yamamoto (12-year, $365M), and along the way had turned down an offer from the Yankees that was half that, thinking if he held out, he could get better, if not comparable.

He was wrong.  Delightfully.

Ultimately, he signed with the Giants on a two-year, $62M deal which is still an egregious annual value to a human being to throw a baseball over and over again, and seeing as how it had an opt-out clause in between, it was evident that Snell’s goal was going to be to pitch his ass off, opt-out, and try again for a Yamamoto deal, while also having the security cushion of a fat $31M second year with the Giants if things fell through.

The 2024 season couldn’t have started off any worse for someone playing the game Snell was trying to play; he would go 0-3, never getting out of the fifth inning, and have an ERA of 11.57.  His peripherals were shit, he was throwing too many pitches, walking too many guys, and downright sucked.  It was clear that he basically did no work or working out during the offseason, and didn’t prepare at all during the spring since he was technically unemployed almost until the start of the season, and it was showing on the field.

He was put on the DL for sucking, AKA bullshit injury to justify poor performance, and came back at the end of May, where he would proceed to string together three more shitty starts, where he still couldn’t get out of the fifth inning, and was pitching terribly, but was masked by the fact that the Giants still won two of those games in spite of him.

I relished in Snell’s poor performance, and despite my general disdain for Bay Area sports fans, even I didn’t think they deserved the turd that the Blake Snell contract was turning into.  Without question, he was going to opt-in to year two of his deal, and hamstring the Giants for another $31M that could’ve been utilized in so many better ways.

Once again he went on the DL for sucking, and he was back on July 9th and this is where the story really begins.  Snell would pitch five innings, giving up just a single hit and no runs, and the Giants would win.  The Giants would win two of his next three starts, with Snell pitching like the two-time Cy Young winner he was.

On August 2nd, Snell would get the first win of his season, after pitching a fucking no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds, and he would follow that with another quality start and another win.

The overall picture of Blake Snell’s current 2024 isn’t notable – 2-3 W-L in 12 starts, a 4.31 ERA, with the Giants going 7-5.  But since July, he’s gone 2-0 in six starts, has an ERA of 1.15 and the team has gone 5-1.

It’s very apparent that he’s finally woken up, and that he’s beginning to pitch his ass off so that he can opt-out at the end of the season and make another try for a long-term Yamamoto-money deal.

Here’s the thing though, as many words as I’ve spoken to be critical about Blake Snell, I actually have never bothered to really take a deep dive into the numbers that paint the picture of Blake Snell; until now.  And the most interesting thing I’m discovering about ol’ Balakey is that save for the no-hitter, the season narrative described above is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary for him.

I’ve read numerous times about how Snell is “a slow starter” but figured it was typical media defending of the guy.  But looking at his career numbers and splits, slow starter doesn’t do the man justice.

I’m now convinced that Blake Snell is probably the smartest baseball player there is, at the way he has absolutely gamed the game of baseball in order to make as much money as he can, with the least amount of effort possible.  I mean, the guy streams video games in his downtime, gaming is nothing outside of his realm of interests, and it’s apparent that he’s brought that mentality into his career strategy.

Looking over his game logs over the last few seasons, which were coincidentally the most critical years in terms of showcasing himself in preparation for free agency, his Aprils have as many L’s as the 2024 Chicago White Sox, and he looks like shit; can’t get more than five innings, giving up lots of runs, mundane strikeout numbers.

But then July hits each year, Snell’s fairy godmother materializes out of nowhere and turns him into fucking Nolan Ryan.  He starts piling up strikeouts, the inning numbers start turning from 5.0 to 7.0, and the team starts piling up W’s like they’re the 1996 Chicago Bulls.

This isn’t hyperbole, there really is that drastic of a split between the first halves and second halves of his seasons, career-wide:

1st Halves: 28-39 W-L, 3.98 ERA, 1.339 WHIP, 10.9 K/9
2nd Halves: 41-17 W-L, 2.41 ERA, 1.097 WHIP, 11.4 K/9

Now I know all these numbers don’t mean a thing to anyone who doesn’t follow baseball, but what it really says is that Blake Snell is trash in the first half of most seasons, and turns into a fucking demi-god in the second half.  He walks fewer guys, strikes out more guys, and the team just flat out wins.

And the thing is, I don’t think this is coincidental, I don’t think this is fluky, I think it’s entirely by design and mostly deliberate by Blake Snell.  It’s no secret in the world of professional sports that athletes tend to metaphorically hit the NOS during their walk-years, and there’s mountains of evidence that exist these days to justify such a notion.  It’s also no secret that professional sport is influenced tremendously by recency bias, where the most recent version of an athlete is the one to consider when it comes time to negotiate dolla-dollas.

I may not be a fan of Blake Snell’s perceived-by-me money-grubbing ways, but I see you, Balakey.  I kind of respect the cerebral approach to optimizing his earning capabilities.  I’m not going to poo-poo on a guy’s effort to make as much money as he can, but at the same time, I’m not going to also not think that it does seem crappy to the teams, the fans of those teams, and those who root for him, to often be knowing that unless it’s July or later, he’s probably holding something back and not trying his hardest, because as he’s demonstrated for us all over the last few years, those April-May-June starts definitely don’t mean as much as the months July and on.